Category: Subject Heading Manual

Three little words that appear on numerous headings in LCSH — they indicate that if the resource requires it, you may add geographic subdivisions to that heading.

For the most part, that’s fairly easy to do: you look up the form of the name of the country, region, city, etc. — toss it into a $z and call it a day. (I’ll probably end up doing a post on H 830-H 870 for the finer points of that process, but this post isn’t about the details.)

But in my work, I catalog many resources which need to be geographically subdivided by Israel, Palestine, or various cities/regions contained therein. Suddenly the phrase ‘May Subd Geog’ takes on a whole new meaning.

Is there a part of the world whose geographic subdivisions are more fraught, are more contentious, have cost more lives than this one? Maybe, I’m no historian — but it must be high up on the list. Yet we have to do it, and its impractical to add notes to every record explaining the history of the region, the governments in control, and their geopolitical statuses.

So the H 980 memo provides detailed instructions to us, the catalogers, on which terms to use for which regions in geographic headings. Note that the general public has almost certainly not read that memo, and all too often it seems catalogers haven’t read that memo because I encounter (and correct) improper subdivisions all the time.

The reason I’m jumping ahead in fact is because I found a few errors recently and received some support on twitter for doing so.

Sigh. So many mistakes….should I skip ahead in my #SHM posts to H 0980 and cover "how to use Palestine as a geog subdivision"?

This is important because of its implications. As a general rule, geographic subdivision always begins at the country level then may proceed to a smaller region/city level. Any exceptions to this rule are very specific and laid out clearly. To my reading, this exception has been made as one those ‘no one’s happy’ compromises.

Israel considers Jerusalem as its undivided capital city. The State of Palestine considers East Jerusalem as its capital. (And this was also recognized in 2012 by 138 member countries of the UN). Yet Jerusalem, in the NAF, and as instructed here — does not ‘belong’ to any country. We divide directly to it as a subdivision, and it stands unqualified in a 651.

651 #0 $a Jerusalem $v Aerial views

NOT

651 #0 $a Jerusalem (Israel) $v Aerial views

or

651 #0 $a Jerusalem (Palestine) $v Aerial views

I have no insight into the history of these memos or decisions, if one of you brilliant readers knows of documentation on the editorial meetings that must’ve taken place prior to the writing/codifying of these memos — I’d be indebted to you and go read them!

So instead I’m left with idle speculation and careful assumptions. I can’t say that LC was trying to avoid taking a position on the geo-political status of Jerusalem or the other regions, but it sure seems that way. Though as the wise Rush teaches us —

Cataloging isn’t neutral, and we are inevitably taking positions with our cataloging. Saying that Jerusalem doesn’t have a particular and unique country-of-belonging is a political statement.

The same applies to the Golan Heights with respect to Syria and Israel, and it’s treated the same as Jerusalem in LCSH — it belongs to no specific country.

What’s interesting (to me at least) about the Gaza Strip and the West Bank’s treatment, is that by near universal agreement, these are part of the State of Palestine. Even Israel does not consider them part of Israel, and has (more or less) recognized their right to self-govern. So why are they not divided through by $z Palestine? This brings us to the second big ruling of the memo:

For LCSH purposes, Palestine means the entirety of the region past and present.

This is where things get tricky. Increasingly in international discourse, ‘Palestine’ as a term is used to mean the State of Palestine. Yet, LCSH uses it to mean all of Israel + State of Palestine as both a historical region and a modern day geographic region. I don’t dispute that its useful to have a term to encompass the entire region, particularly because there’s so much of history that doesn’t divide it into those two specific modern nations. But because of the term they chose for that, and its easy confluence with the current country — it gets misapplied all the time.

So repeating for those in the back:

When your resource is about the post-1948 State of Palestine divide geographically by Jerusalem, West Bank, and/or Gaza Strip.

When your resource is about the entirety of the region, past or present — divide by Palestine.

When your resource is about the post-1948 State of Israel, divide geographically by Jerusalem and/or Israel.

The final big rule from the memo:

Palestinian National Authority is a governmental entity coded 151

We are to assign it to works about the government of the State of Palestine and any headings which are appropriate for use under the name of a governmental entity may be used under it. Do not use it to indicate any specific geographic region.

I may write more about Palestine/Israel, goddess knows I’ve already written much — particularly with regards to its classification and appearance in other places in other LCSH headings, but this covers the H 980 memo.

While mostly tongue in cheek, they are open to input from the public (and with a bit of prodding and nudging, you too can ever participate in the process!), the fact remains that it’s the Library of Congress’ subject headings, and the Library of Congress’ manual.

The headings are intended to be used bytheir catalogers, and the manual is there to help guide those catalogers in the headings use.

What this means in practice is that there are a lot of times in reading the memos that you’ll come across specific instructions on reporting or changing a heading which only makes sense if you work at the library of congress.

An example of this can be found in Memo H 165 which includes instructions on when to change headings in bibliographic records. None of these instructions apply to you at your institution with your ILS. They’re specifically for LC catalogers using the LC ILS.

Sure, you may want to glance at the memo, and perhaps incorporate some equivalent instructions in your local policy, but some of the instructions really are so specific as not apply more widely, unless you institution happens to use the same “Database Maintenance Request Form” (it doesn’t.)

Anyway — just a good reminder to start us off. There’s a lot to be learned from the memos, and deeper dives into it will make all our subject cataloging better and more consistent. But important to keep in mind: It’s LC’s vocab, and LC’s manual. Read it with that grain of salt, because while we can agitate for change, it serves a greater function than what we want.

It has many names (and I made up most of those, I have no idea what color [if any] it came in) but maybe we aren’t using those names enough. As pointed out by Erin Leach in her post, while there are books critiquing the Library of Congress Subject Headings (hereafter, LCSH), and blog-posts upon #CritLib discussions upon novelty twitter accounts, about LCSH — there are comparatively few works about the Subject Headings Manual.

I get this. LCSH is easy to access, and quick to scan. It can be bizarre, funny, and blazingly insensitive. However, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, far from it — it can’t exist on its own. LCSH is just a list of words, sure it’s a long list, but it’s still just a list. There are occasional scope notes, never as often as we’d like, telling us how a certain term is to be applied, but LCSH doesn’t say anything itself about how to use the vocabulary.

Enter the Subject Headings Manual (hereafter SHM).

It contains memos…many memos.

Every wondered how to apply headings to literature? Better check the six memos covering literature.

There are memos on how to assign and construct headings in the general sense and in very specific senses, memos on specific languages in headings, memos on geographic headings in general and memos on specific regions/cities. There are memos for applying headings to certain groups/types of things and lists of available subdivisions for those groups. There are memos on specific subdivisions detailing their use. There’s a glossary and oh yes indeed — seven appendices.

Critiquing and criticizing LCSH is important, but it can’t be the whole picture. LCSH may be the ‘what’, but the SHM is the ‘how’ and ‘why’, and we’re going to start digging in.

Stay tuned.

N.B.

As readers of this blog will attest, I don’t have a good track record for completing all my series’ that begin with “Part 1”. I’m trying to be less ambitious here and do not plan to actually write a post for every memo in the SHM.